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We did our 1st home haunt last year, and it was a great success. Being a carpenter by trade I always helped the fire dept build their haunted house for them. Now that our daughter is older we strarted home haunting and we are loving it. I'm sure with all of you, you've spent a lot of time and money putting together your haunts. What are your thoughts in charging for home haunts to off set the costs?

We charged $2 for our home haunt to try to get back some of what we spent, but we still spent more than we got back. We talked to different people in the county like we talked to the sheriff about charging $2 and why we would do it. She said it was alright as long as we weren't looking to make a profit and we weren't (I mean com'on it's only $2) We only did it for Halloween night. We plan on charging the same amount this year and even though we hope to get more people we are still going to just do it for Halloween night because even if we got double the amount of people we would still be able to get everyone in on time and we can always stay open until everyone gets through. So basically if you are looking to charge to make back some of what you spent I would go ahead and talk to maybe the sheriff or something like we did. If you are looking to make a profit than it is probably going to be a No. We did hear of some people complaining that we were charging $2, but anyone who went through knew it was worth it. We had people dashing out the exit and out of our yard.

Thanks for your input guys. We weren't going to charge kids 12 and under. Last year I had the fire chief come over (after I bulit theirs) and take a look. Saftey 1st. I'll have to look in to the zoning. Thanks for the sound advice

I dont know if this is correct or not but this is what we were told back when we had a home haunt. We were told we could not charge because when you charge it became a business but you can ask for a monetary donation and your home owners insurance was suppose to cover it because they are a guest at your home. I would still get insurance but like they said check into permits. They tried to shut our home haunt (1996) down because the city said I needed electrical permits to run the power for the lighting. I got around that by switching every light over to 12 volt by using the RV bulbs from walmart. Just check first to avoid any problems you may have. Dont put alot of work into it and find out you cant open ruining your halloween.
Greg
Fearfest